TrustedVue

We’re introducing TrustedVue today, a feature that allows you to share your statistics with your family, friends, doctor or whoever you wish.

Sharing your statistics and progress is just as important as keeping track of them, especially in regards to your health-care professional.

How it works

With TrustedVue you create accounts for the people you trust to view your information. They will then be notified via email and be able to login. Simply click on the main “Lists & Settings” tab and in the subnavigation you’ll see a new “TrustedVue Login List” link.

The cool thing (we think ) is that when they login, they will be able to view and interact within SugarStats just as you do but in a “read-only” mode. Which means they won’t be able to add, edit or delete anything.

How it looks for you

How it looks for a TrustedVue account

TrustedVue Messaging

We’ve also added basis (emphasis on basic… For now ) messaging between you and the people you let view your account. This is a private, one-to-one communication. Meaning you will see all the messages between various TrustedVue accounts but they will only be able to see messages sent to you by them or sent to them by you.

You can start a new message in the message tab, or you can relate a message to a specific day (we’re adding message related to specific timeframes soon) by creating the message on a specific day (at the bottom of the day page.)

Messaging Permissions
Permissions are simple: You get to edit/delete any message you like and TrustedVue accounts under you can only edit/delete those created by them. It’s no GMail and wasn’t meant to be, but its simple and we want to keep it that way .

It’s no surprise to anyone who has diabetes how much the medication costs. Though some are covered by insurance, many are not. It’s easy to brush off the hundreds of dollars it would cost for a month or two supply of test strips when the insurance pays for it, it is quite different when you have to yourself.

But the truth is there more to pay for and more at stake than just paying for the medicine and supplies. There are the cost of surgeries and hospital visits that are the results of diabetic complications.

From a Yahoo! Article: The Surprisingly High Cost of Diabetes

“Nearly 3 out of 5 of the 18 million Americans with Type 2 diabetes suffer from at least one serious health complication such as heart attack or chronic kidney disease, according to a new study. Taken together, complications from the disease accounted for an estimated $22.9 billion in medical spending in 2006; annual health care costs per person were nearly $10,000, almost three times higher than for non diabetics.”

Some of the notables:

• 3 out of 5 Type-2 Diabetics in the U.S. suffer complications costing an estimated $22.9 Billion in 2006.
• It accounts to nearly $10,000 per person in health care costs.
• That cost is nearly 3x higher than for non-diabetics.
• On average, people with complications paid $1,566 out-of-pocket annually.

Definitely something to think about. The cost of diabetes is rising in more ways than one. This just underlines the need for better management, better education and overall better awareness of diabetes from diabetics themselves as well as the general public.

There has been plenty of discussion about this on the net, but it serves as a good example of how always being prepared is in your best interest.

Doug Burns is the 43 year old Mr. Natural Universe. It seems as he was off his regular insulin pump and was trying some new medication.

While at the movies he encountered a bad low and staggered towards the stands to get some juice. They thought he was intoxicated and called the police. The police then said he attacked them while in a fighting stance and it took 4 of them to wrestle him to the ground.

”“The fact is Mr. Burns assaulted our officer,” Cesena said. “If he had just stood there and let us help him maybe they would have called the medics if he didn’t seem to fit the description of being under the influence. All that changes when the subject wants to attack an officer.””

For Burns, though, the fact is he doesn’t recall much between feeling his blood sugar dropping in the Cinemark theater and regaining coherence in the San Mateo Medical Center with mace on his shirt and glucose paste down the side of his face. The time in between are snapshots, he said, of being on the sidewalk in front of the theater unable to speak, hearing officers theorize he was on PCP and hoping somebody noticed either the Medic Alert bracelet on his wrist or a card in his wallet identifying him as the director of diabetes and obesity education for a medical research institute.”

While the officers didn’t know of his condition, I can’t help feels a bit sorry for Mr. Burns, I wouldn’t want this to happen to anyone. There are a few things that could have helped prevent situations like this:

1. Regular Testing and bringing your tester with you – See point 3, this is especially needed when testing new medications.
2. ALWAYS having fast-acting glucose tablets with you – They are so cheap, it is easy to carry a pack in every bag and popular jacket you have.
3. Have common sense when testing out new medications – He was on a new medication, he should have have both of the above on him.

There are plenty of opinion about how it would have turned out if the circumstances were different (If it was a small guy, a cute girl etc). But point here is for diabetics to learn from this situation to decrease the likelihood of it happening.

Full story: Police wrestle, mace and arrest Mr. Universe

I’m happy to announce SugarStats now has experimental mmol/l support!

Mmol/l support

I wish we could have released it at the private-BETA launch but it had to wait.

To some of you this might not matter at all, most likely if you’re in the U.S. then it doesn’t. In the U.S. the standard for measuring glucose levels is in mg/dL and stands for milligrams/deciliter.

But everywhere else in the world another standard is used which is called mmol/l. mmol/l stands for millimoles/liter and is the world standard for measuring blood glucose.

Mg/dl to mmol/l conversion

Along with general support we’ve integrated mg/dl to mmol/l conversion and vise-versa. So if you’ve been BETA testing and having to enter your readings in mg/dl but really have them taken in mmol/l, now you can convert any existing entries.

All you have to do is go to your “lists & settings” page, go to personal details and select which one you’d like from the glucose scale drop-down box.

Once you update it will automatically convert to the opposite scale.

Conversion process

Note though that the formula we used for conversion isn’t particularly complex, we used a very common method in which you simply divide(or multiply) by 18. So there might be a slight margin of error on some of your entries, but for the most part it is pretty precise.

All of you BETA testing can us it immediately, feel free to drop by the forum / contact support if you need help or have questions.

Medical news today has an excellent article up regarding the effects on embryonic cells high blood glucose has which affects pregnant women.

What I’m curious is how this (or if) can turn into possible gestational diabetes in women? Studies like this just put the spotlight even more on regulated glucose levels, especially if its affecting the development of fetus’.

“Over the past several years, Joslin Investigator Mary R. Loeken, Ph.D., and her colleagues at Joslin Diabetes Center have unlocked several mysteries behind what puts women with diabetes more at risk of having a child with birth defects. Even though those risks have decreased significantly over the years, thanks in part to advancements at Joslin, women with diabetes still are two to five times more likely than the general population to have a baby with birth defects, especially of the heart and spinal cord, organs that form within the first few weeks of pregnancy.”

They discovered the protein called glucose transporter 2 (Glut2) enabled high amounts of glucose to be easily transfered into embryonic cells which affects the critical early development stages of fetus’

“Now, in this latest study done in mice, Dr. Loeken and her colleagues have discovered that the protein called glucose transporter 2 (Glut2) makes it possible for the high concentrations of glucose to get into the embryonic cells efficiently when the mother’s blood glucose concentrations are high. Also involved in the study was Rulin Li, Ph.D., a former postdoctoral fellow at Joslin. The study, supported by the National Institutes of Health, will appear in the March print edition of Diabetologia and was published online by the journal.”

They also found that those without the Glut2 gene were protected against deformation in diabetic pregnancies:

“Using mice that lacked Glut2 genes, which were developed by one of the study’s co-authors, Bernard Thorens, Ph.D., of the Center for Integrated Genomics at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, Joslin researchers found that only embryos carrying normal Glut2 genes developed malformations when the mothers were diabetic, whereas embryos that lacked Glut2 genes were protected from malformations during diabetic pregnancy. “This shows that the high-transport Glut2 transporter was responsible for getting higher concentrations of glucose in the cell and causing the malformations.” The embryos were examined on the 10th day of gestation. The time span in the mice, Dr. Loeken explained, is comparable to about the fourth or fifth weeks of a human pregnancy, which is about the time a woman may discover that she is pregnant.”

Though I’m not sure what the ratio or chances are of a given person having the Glut2 gene, there are 14 other transporter genes as well.

You can read the whole article here: Protein Makes It Possible For High Blood Glucose To Enter Embryonic Cells

I found an interesting article through joescafe in which a study determined many (1 in 16) T1DM (Type-1 Diabetes Mellitus) did not wake up from hypoglycemia during sleep.

Very disturbing indeed . Some interesting snippets:

“These results suggest that the awakening response to hypoglycemia is impaired in T1DM patients. It appears that awakening forms part of a central nervous system response to hypoglycemia and that failure to awaken increases the risk for T1DM patients to suffer prolonged hypoglycemia.”

In a related perspective Harry Shamoon and Ilan Gabriely, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, discuss the paper further and conclude although further work is need to investigate the precise mechanisms involved, it “strongly supports and further advances the current notion of T1DM susceptibility to nocturnal hypoglycemia””

Interesting findings. But I must say, being a Type-1 diabetic for 15 years, I’ve woken up from hypoglycemia every time. I say every time because if I didn’t I either wouldn’t be here to type this or I somehow corrected my blood sugar in my sleep . I’ve also met quite a few other Type-1’s that have told me they’ve woken up so I’m curious to know what the personal conditions of the test and its subjects were.

Good to know none-the-less and reinforces much of that said in our 5 tips to keep your glucose levels balanced during sleep post.

Heres a link to the full article: Patients With Type 1 Diabetes Don’t Wake In Response To Hypoglycemia

After doing some reflection and planning in order to further lower my own HbA1C levels, one thing I found made a bigger improvement over others. Thinking about it now it makes perfect sense. What is it you ask?

This may seem like common sense, you might even say DUH, but it actually takes a bit more organizational skill to actually implement. Thought this will probably benefit the type 1 diabetic the most, it could be valuable for all.

Quite simply it could be one of the easiest ways for a diabetic to lower their HbA1C levels and keep their overall levels in check. Most of our glucose fluctuations happen over the course of the day as we move about, eat meals, exercise etc. But when we sleep we’re doing none of that PLUS you don’t have all the temptations throughout the day that would otherwise affect your glucose levels. (Unless you count those middle of the night snacks )

What this does is basically is give your body a guaranteed 6-9 hours (or however long you sleep) of regulated glucose level with little distractions.

So what does it take to do this? I think it is highly variable between one person to another, but these tips work for me:

• Bedtime Glucose Check – Checking your glucose levels at bedtime (which you might be doing anyway).

• Middle of the night alarm – If you find yourself having trouble, one thing you could do is set an alarm to wake up and test in the middle of the night. Just take note of what it was at, what you ate and what medication you took at bedtime to compare things.

• Adjust medication – Make sure the insulin you take (short or long lasting) will cover you during the night. It would probably be best to consult your doctor.

• Adjust your Food – Keep an eye on what you eat a few hours before going to bed. Depending on the type of foods you at, how many carbs/sugars/fats etc they contained, it could come back to bit you in the middle of the night even if your glucose level at bedtime was good. This would be a good place to consult your dietitian to figure out what will work best for you regarding dinner and evening foods.

• Find the balance – Each body is different and your will respond differently to the foods you eat and medications you take. This really is about knowing yourself and knowing your body. Knowing how certain foods affect you and what affect certain dosages of your medication will have on you. To make this work the best you’ll have to find the right balance to keep a balanced glucose level through the night.

Overall a pretty simple but helpful tip. Be cautious though not to over compensate for any one thing, or you could end up dipping into a bad low during your sleep and you definitely don’t want that.

Just remember the overall goal is this: When you go to bed, make sure you glucose level is where it should be and it stays there through the night until you wake up

I found a nifty little website where you can convert your HbA1c levels to what you’re equivalent average blood glucose level would be in the same time period.

For example: An HbA1c level of 6% would be like having an average 114 mg/dL glucose reading. 8% would be like having an average 180 mg/dL glucose reading.

This will be quite a handy tool especially to help you with keep up with your targets and goals.

Check out the HbA1c converter here